Greetings and Salutations Reader,
Tangerine; a citrus fruit, a type of tree, a middle school, a county in Florida, and a fantastic book by Edward Bloor. Though, this is not just a random county, this is the town in which our protagonist, Paul Fisher, now lives his day to day life. Paul doesn’t have a normal life though. He deals with visual impairment and, as a result, endures tantalizing at the hands of his dissolute brother and classmates, who refer to him as eclipse boy. The bullying isn’t even the last of it, Paul also undergoes other troubles. He lives with problems such as environmental issues, changing schools, an overbearing mother, a father that only supports one of his sons to benefit himself, and a mystery surrounding why he needs his glasses in the first place.
The author, Edward Bloor, in many instances uses action and dialogue to show the readers the difference in character traits
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It was completely empty now, and the door was flung open, like something wild had just escaped from it. Like it was the empty tomb of some runaway zombie”(1). This passage tells you how Paul viewed the house, like a tomb. The house was a connection to his past so, Paul thought of this house as his tomb, that this house was his fate. He even states that it looks like something escaped, not left. Leaving Houston, for Paul, is a way to escape his past and and start over.
Tangerine by Edward Bloor is a novel that I would rate at about an eight or a nine. It didn’t quite make a ten just because there were certain parts that the pacing of the book threw me off, whether it be everything happening too slowly or too quickly. Other than that I really enjoyed the book overall, and especially liked and related to Paul’s character. All in all, I would recommend this book to a person looking for a good read, at about a middle school level that may enjoy the journal entry formatting, the use of flashbacks, the sibling rivalry themes, or the sensory